A number of radical groups — including Marxist, Socialist, and other groups whose goal is the overthrow of the American system — have seized on the Trayvon Martin verdict and are now organizing events and rallies trying to instigate anger over the verdict to serve their own agenda.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) organized a rally in San Francisco that drew several hundreds within hours of the verdict. PSL is also holding a number of events related to police brutality, which they’ve augmented to focus on the Trayvon Martin verdict. In Chicago, they held a study group titled “Stand Up Against Police Brutality and Justice for Trayvon Martin” on July 23, 2013. A similar event will be held in San Francisco on July 26, 2013. A major rally against police brutality in Syracuse, New York is slated for August 21, 2013.

According to PSL and groups with a similar ideological bent, the police are merely tools of the capitalists, used to suppress the working class, which PSL declares has been given the shaft by America’s capitalistic system. Eugene Puryear is an organizer with PSL and he explained the group’s view in the most recent issue of Liberation News, the magazine published by PSL.

Militarized policing became the status quo, creating a massive apparatus that keeps itself going by always creating new “wars”. What started as a war on revolutionaries switched to the so-called “War on Drugs” and now the “War on Terror.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the suppression of the radical wing of the social movements of the era significantly weakened those who would have been the principal obstacles to the mass incarceration policies and police repression against Black America, trends that intensified in the 1980’s and continue to this day.

PSL and groups like it see the Trayvon Martin affair as another example of misplaced priorities and inherent racism in the criminal justice system.

The New Black Panther Party will use the Trayvon Martin verdict as the main theme of its annual “Million Youth March,” which will be held in Harlem, New York on September 7, 2013. On its website announcing the event, the New Black Panthers proudly proclaim that they’ve been in favor of vigilante justice in this case for months.

We responsibly identified our constitutional rights to offer a $10,000.00 reward for anyone that could keep up with this Zimmerman whom we fear would try to leave the country. We also, under the United States Constitution, gave the city of Sanford, Florida and the United States Attorney General, our brother, Eric Holder that we were following protocol of issuing a citizen’s arrest and that we could prove probable cause. We would make it our mission to bring in the murderer George Michael Zimmerman, who is still with his father and mother, Robert and Gladys Zimmerman.

The National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression (NAARPR) issued a statement as well, condemning the verdict as another example of the racism inherent in the justice system. The NAARPR favors a total abolition of America’s prison system. The statement from the NAARPR also indicated that the verdict is another example of the inherent racism in our justice system.

Two things have occurred in the past month which indicate that African Americans have no rights that white law makers, police and racist vigilantes are bound to respect. The first was the U.S. Supreme Court gutting of the Voting Rights Act, characterizing it as “perpetual racial entitlements” and thereby perpetually entitling white representatives of ruling elites to disenfranchise African Americans in an effort to bring back Jim Crow. The second was the acquittal Saturday of George Zimmerman, murderer of Trayvon Martin.

At nearly every rally related to the Trayvon Martin case, one can find radical groups like the above passing out literature and hoping to ride the coattails of the controversy to advance their own agenda. Their agenda includes the complete overhaul of the USA, into something that resembles a Marxist or anarchist state. Will they gain converts to the cause?